Identifying social profiles in a social network having relevance to a first file

ABSTRACT

Methods and systems for providing related social profiles in a social network are disclosed. One method identifying a plurality of social profiles within the social network, wherein the plurality of social profiles each have a relationship with the first file, wherein the social network allows uploading and sharing of social profiles of users, and wherein each social profile includes a representation of a user. The method further includes generating, by a system server, a list of inquiries based on the plurality of social profiles, providing, by the system server, the list of inquiries to at least one author of the first file, receiving from the at least one author at least one response to the list of inquiries, selecting a subset of the plurality of social profiles based on the at least one response, and storing information related to the selected subset of the plurality of social profiles for access if the first file is selected.

FIELD OF EMBODIMENTS

The described embodiments relate generally to search results. Moreparticularly, the described embodiments relate to methods, and systemsfor identifying social profiles in a social network having relevance toa first file.

BACKGROUND

In a social network, search engines use a variety of search techniquesto present social profiles to users based on one or more search terms,which are provided by the users. The relevance of the search resultsrelate closely to the search terms. Selection of a profile from thesearch results in the search engine of a social network provides a listof social profiles related to the selected social profile. Users wholike to read more about the related subject matter use the resultssuggested by the author or the search engine itself. For documentspublished after the publication date of the selected document, usershave to rely on the search engine to provide a relevant list. Thedocuments suggested by search engines are based on the search engine'salgorithm. The search engine generally produces a large number ofdocuments, which include some irrelevant results and are difficult tosort for relevant documents. Many suggested documents are not relevantto the user. Relevant results are not always provided.

It is desirable to have methods and systems for providing an up-to-datelist of documents related to the selected document relevant to thesubject matter of the selected document in a social network.

SUMMARY

One embodiment includes a method of identifying one or more socialprofiles in a social network related to a first file. The methodincludes identifying a plurality of social profiles within the socialnetwork, wherein the plurality of social profiles each have arelationship with the first file, wherein the social network allowsuploading and sharing of social profiles of users, and wherein eachsocial profile includes a representation of a user. The method furtherincludes generating, by a system server, a list of inquiries based onthe plurality of social profiles, providing, by the system server, thelist of inquiries to at least one author of the first file, receivingfrom the at least one author at least one response to the list ofinquiries, selecting a subset of the plurality of social profiles basedon the at least one response, and storing information related to theselected subset of the plurality of social profiles for access if thefirst file is selected.

Another embodiment includes providing the list of inquiries to more thanone author. In another embodiment, a different list of inquiries isprovided to a first author and other authors. The identified socialprofiles are ranked based on the responses from all the authors and asubset of social profiles is selected.

Other aspects and advantages of the described embodiments will becomeapparent from the following detailed description, taken in conjunctionwith the accompanying drawings, illustrating by way of example theprinciples of the described embodiments.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

In the following figures like reference numbers are used to refer tolike elements. Although the following figures depict various examples,the one or more implementations are not limited to the examples depictedin the figures.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a system of providingrelated social profiles from a social network, where an author providesinput to selecting/ranking a subset of social profiles.

FIG. 2 shows an example list of inquiries presented to the authors.

FIG. 3 is another example list of inquiries presented to the authors.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a system of providingrelated social profiles, where more than one author provides input toselecting/ranking a subset of social profiles.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a system of providingrelated social profiles in a social network, where more than one authoris involved in the selecting/ranking a subset of social profiles andmore than one list of inquiries is generated.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a system of providingrelated social profiles, where an author provides input toselecting/ranking a subset of social profiles, where a search yields afirst file.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart that includes the steps of an example of a methodof providing related social profiles in a social network, where one ormore authors provide input to selecting/ranking a subset of socialprofiles.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart that includes the steps of an example of a methodof providing related social profiles in a social network, where morethan one list of inquiries is generated and more than one author isinvolved in the selecting/ranking a subset of social profiles.

FIG. 9 is a flowchart of an example of a method of providing a list ofrelated social profiles, where an author is involved in theselecting/ranking a subset of social profiles, where a search yields afirst file.

FIG. 10 shows the block diagram of an example system of providingrelated social profiles to a search result in a social network.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The described embodiments are embodied in methods, and systems forproviding a set of social profiles to a user in a social network, wherethe set of social profiles have relevance to the first file from asearch or retrieval of a record identifying the first file.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an embodiment of system 100, a system ofproviding related social profiles in a social network, where an authoris involved in selecting/ranking a subset of social profiles.

Enterprises create shared social networks for various businessactivities. Users can upload social profiles and share the socialprofiles immediately without the need to email or transport usingportable storage drives. For at least some embodiments, the socialnetwork allows uploading and sharing of social profiles of users, andeach social profile includes a representation of a user. In anembodiment, the shared social profiles have read or read and writeprivileges. Researchgate®, Academia®, LinkedIn®, Facebook®,Biomedexperts®, Quora®, Stackoverfiow®, Chatter® and Jive® are examplesof social networks. In the described embodiments, social network is anonline service focusing on building network among people who shareinterests and/or activities. A social network consists of arepresentation of each user by a social profile and the user's sociallinks and a variety of additional services. Social network also providesa platform for interaction with other users via e-mail and instantmessaging.

The social network stores social profiles in different formats notlimited to word document, power point presentations, portable documentformat (pdf), spreadsheets, photos and videos. In one embodiment of asocial network, a user may contribute to the social profile system. Inan embodiment, any user may edit a social profile similar to a wiki. Inanother embodiment, write privilege to a social profile may be assignedto a certain group of users such as team of users or a team of peopleworking on a project.

In an embodiment, a first file may be information describing a person'sinterests in the social network such as Facebook® or research papers byan author listed on the social profile in a social network such asResearchgate® or Academia® identified to generate a list of relatedsocial profiles. In another embodiment, a first file may be answersgiven by the author to questions in social networks such as Quora® orStackoverflow®, or expert profiles posted in enterprise social networkssuch as Chatter® or Jive® identified to generate a list of relatedsocial profiles. In several embodiments, the first file may be arecently added social profile to the social network, or identified due alarge number of social profiles added to the social network in the samesubject matter, or identified automatically for a periodic update ofrelated social profiles, or identified by any other method. It is to beunderstood that for various embodiments, the first file includes atleast one of a web page, a document, an article, a social profile, amessage, a message thread, a conversation, a video file, an audio file,or a picture file. It is also to be understood that this is not anexhaustive list.

At least some embodiments of the social network are updated constantlyas users add social profiles to the social network. As the number ofsocial profiles grows large, the existence of the social profile may notbe known to many users if relevant hyperlinks to other social profilesare not created. Creating hyperlinks is a manual task and often fewsocial profiles are linked together in a social network. Search enginesprovide access to the social profiles that are not linked.

Many author/authors list references to social profiles of other userswith related interests in their social profiles. The social profilesreferenced by author/authors are generally more relevant than themachine generated references. Unlike machine generated references usingan algorithm running on a computer, the judgment of human users inselecting reference profiles is uniquely valuable to other readers dueto the author's intrinsic understanding and motivation to identifymaterials related to the social profile written by that user. Ingeneral, an author or expert has greater interest and more preciseunderstanding of the subject matter compared to other readers. Inseveral embodiments, a social profile author is the author of a socialprofile, an expert on the subject matter or a team member or a personwho is identified for correspondence related to the social profile orlisted in the metadata of the profile anyone who has write-privilege tothe profile.

Search engines list social profiles that may be related to a first filethat may be published before or after the first file has been published.When a social profile is selected from the search results, a set ofpossibly related social profiles is generally presented by searchengines. The list may not always be accurate. For example, when asked toevaluate the accuracy of the list of related social profiles, an authorof the first file or expert on the subject matter of the first file maynot always concur with the relationship of all the social profilespresented in the list of related social profiles provided by the searchengine. Therefore, lists of possibly related social profiles produced bysearch engines may contain some social profiles that are actuallyrelated (true-positives) and some that are unrelated in practice(false-positives). The set of related social profiles produced by asearch engine are based on some criteria such as the number ofhyperlinks a social profile has, common subject matter, and thefrequency of certain phrases. The number of hyperlinks to a socialprofile is one of the criteria used by search engines to rank it insearch results to make it visible to users searching for it. If a socialprofile has no hyperlinks, a social profile that is actually related maybe missing from the list of related social profiles presented by thesearch engine (false-negatives). The list of related social profilespresented by a search engine can be improved by surveying an expert orauthor to recommend the related social profiles and eliminatefalse-positives and false-negatives. The method of semi-automating thepresentation of a list of related social profiles using surveys isdescribed in the embodiments.

For at least one embodiment, a set of social profiles related to thefirst file is identified in social network 110 by server 120. In oneembodiment, identifying in social network 110 includes server 120identifying a set of social profiles related to the first file andreceiving the list of identified social profiles. In another embodiment,identifying in social network 110 includes server 120 receiving the listof identified social profiles. The set of identified social profiles 110can be the output of natural language search, or text analysis, or fromfiltering, or any other search technique. The search can be based on astring of words, or a picture or an author. The set of social profilesis derived based on a relationship with the first file. The relationshipcan be any one of or some of author of the first file, author of thereferences cited in the first file, frequently used noun phrases,publication date later than the first file, a specific publication date,or a publication date after a specific date. Social profiles publishedfrom an author tend to have common subject matter. Frequently usednoun-phrases in the first file are also keywords for searching relatedsocial profiles. However, the number of occurrences of specific nounphrases in the social network system may change with technology or overa period. Many search engines may not have the intelligence to recognizethe changing noun phrases over a period. In some embodiments, thefull-text of the social profile is used for searching to yield morerelevant related social profiles. Social profiles with publication datelater than the first file are valuable as users are generally interestedin recent updates. In an example, a search engine operating on server120 uses Facebook Graph® API to identify post-publication updates toprofiles in Facebook®, based on noun phrases in full-text. The algorithmused to generate the search terms using Facebook Graph® APIautomatically extracts noun phrases from a social profile using naturallanguage processing tools and ranks them by the number of occurrences inthe social profile compared to the number of occurrences on the web.

In an embodiment, link-validation is used to generate the list ofrelated documents 110. Link-validation is defined as search results fromqueries where the queries are present in one or more links provided bythe author in their social profile. Link-validated search terms improvethe relevance of the search results compared to search terms that arenot present in the links. The links can written by the same authors asthe social profile or written by different authors.

For an embodiment, a server 120 generates a list of inquiries based onthe set of social profiles related to the first file. In an embodiment,the list of inquiries includes questions asking the author whether thesocial profiles are relevant to the first file, and the search termsused in keyword search or noun-phrase used to select the social profile.

FIG. 2 shows example 200, an inquiry generated using keyword search byFacebook Graph® API in Facebook®. The selection of keyword searchresults displays related social profiles. Example 200 shows the relatedsocial profiles from keyword searches. In example 200, 202 is the titleof the first file. The first question summarizes the inquiry aboutrelevant social profiles. 204 is a check box next to a related socialprofile selected by a search engine. 206 is the publication date of therelated social profile. 208 is the search term used to identify therelated social profile. 210 is an input box for the author to enter thereason for the social profile being relevant. 212 shows the author whoselected the profile as relevant. 214 shows the institution of theauthor. 216 shows the relationship tag, 218 shows the email address ofthe author, 220 shows the address and 222 shows the affiliation of theauthor. In one embodiment, the identity of the senders who selected eachmessage thread is revealed to the user by displaying meta-data such asthe sender's name, address, or contact information.

FIG. 3 shows example 300 generated using Facebook® Facebook Graph® APIto obtain related citations in Facebook® and display the social profilespublished after the first file. In the described embodiments, a singleranked list of Facebook® profile that are related are derived fromtext-analysis of profiles is referred to herein as Facebook®Related-Profiles. For each word or term in each profile, a numericweight is computed based on the number of times the word occurs in theprofile and the number of profiles that the term occurs in withinFacebook®. The numeric-weight is used to find the most similar pairs ofprofiles. 312 is the title of the document obtained from relatedcitations.

For an embodiment, again referring to FIG. 1, a social profile author130 is notified of the list of inquiries generated by server 120. In thedescribed embodiments, the notification can be sent electronically. Inan embodiment, the notification email contains a link to a webpage thatcontains the list of inquiries. In another embodiment, the emailcontains the text of the inquiries. In another embodiment, thenotification is sent by an email or message on a social network such asFacebook® or instant message system. In another embodiment, thenotification is sent from a web-based interface such as Jive®, orLinkedIn® or Google Docs®. The author of the social profile completesthe inquiry by selecting one or more social profiles related to thefirst file in the opinion of the author, and sends the response to theserver using any of the notification methods described in severalembodiments above. Server 120 receives the response to the inquiry fromthe social profile author and processes the response. The responseincludes a selection of social profiles related to the first file. In anembodiment, the response includes a ranked list of the related socialprofiles, identifying the relevance of the related social profiles tothe first file.

In an embodiment, social profiles selected by the social profile authorare ranked higher than the social profiles not selected by the socialprofile author. In an embodiment, a subset of the ranked social profilesis selected. In another embodiment, all social profiles selected bysocial profile author 130 are selected. In another embodiment, a certainnumber of ranked social profiles are selected. Server 120 creates ahyperlink between the first file and the subset of selected/rankedsocial profiles in the social network. The hyperlink influences futuresearch results of the engine when the first file or any of the subset ofsocial profiles is involved. Server 120 stores information about thesubset of related social profiles in a social network in database 140.The information includes one or more of hyperlinks to the related socialprofiles, ranking of the social profiles, the author of the first file,and metadata of the social profiles. In the described embodiments,hyperlinks are references to social profiles that connect the users toanother social profile or a portion of the social profile. In anotherembodiment, database 140 is a separate storage. When a user selects(150) the social profile identifier from search results or any otherlisting, server 120 retrieves information about the selected/rankedrelated social profiles. In several embodiments, the author is presentedwith a list of information about the related social profiles shown inFIG. 2 and FIG. 3. In one embodiment, the identity of the authors of thesocial profiles who selected each social profile is revealed to the userby displaying meta-data such as the author's name, institution, andqualifications.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of an embodiment of system 400, a system ofproviding related social profiles, where more than one social profileauthor provides input to selecting/ranking a subset of social profiles.A set of social profiles related to the first file 110 is identified insocial network by server 420. For at least some embodiments, the set ofsocial profiles is derived based on a relationship such as author,frequently use noun-phrases, and common subject matter with the firstfile. For an embodiment, a server 420 generates a list of inquiriesbased on the set of social profiles related to the first file. In anembodiment, the list of inquiries includes questions asking the socialprofile authors whether the related social profiles are relevant to thefirst file as determined by the search engine.

For at least one embodiment, the list of inquiries generated by server420 is notified to the first social profile author 430. In at least someof the described embodiments, a first social profile author is theauthor of the first file, an expert on the subject matter or a teammember or anyone who has write-privilege to the first file. The list ofinquiries is also notified to second social profile author 431. In atleast some of the described embodiments, the second social profileauthor is one or more social profile author other than the first socialprofile author. The first and second social profile authors are notifiedelectronically as described in conjunction with FIG. 1. Server 420receives responses from the first social profile author as well as thesecond social profile authors. The response includes a selection ofsocial profiles related to the first file. In an embodiment, theresponse includes a ranked list of the related social profiles,identifying the relevance of the related social profiles to the firstfile. In an embodiment, social profiles are ranked based on the numberof selections from the first and the second social profile authors. Inan embodiment, the social profiles selected by the first social profileauthor are ranked higher than the social profiles selected by secondsocial profile authors. In another embodiment, all responses are rankedwith the same weight. In another embodiment, a certain number of rankedsocial profiles are selected. In another embodiment, all social profilesselected by the first social profile author and the second socialprofile authors are selected.

For at least some embodiments, information about the selected/rankedsocial profiles is stored in database 140. User selection of the firstfile identifier 150 from search results or any other listing is sent toserver 420. In several embodiments, server 420 retrieves informationabout the selected/ranked list of related social profiles from thesocial network before presenting to the user shown in FIG. 2 and FIG. 3.In one embodiment, the identity of the social profile author s whoselected each social profile is revealed to the user by displayingmeta-data such as the social profile author's name, institution, andqualifications.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of an embodiment of system 500, a system ofproviding related social profiles, where more than one author providesinput to selecting/ranking a subset of the social profiles and more thanone list of inquiries is generated.

For this embodiment, one or more social profiles related to a first fileare identified by server 520 in a social network (similar to thedescription in conjunction with FIG. 1). A list of inquiries isgenerated by server 520 based on the social profiles related to thefirst file. The list of inquiries includes questions asking therelevance of the related social profile to the first file. The list ofinquiries is notified to a first author 550. A first response isreceived from first author 550 by server 520. The first responseincludes selection of social profiles that are related to the first filein the opinion of the first social profile author 550. In an embodiment,the first response includes a ranked list of the related socialprofiles, identifying the relevance of the related social profiles tothe first file. A second list of inquiries is generated based on thefirst response. The second list of inquiries includes questions aboutthe selection of the social profiles related to the first file by thefirst social profile author. In an embodiment, the second list ofinquiries includes one or more of the selection of related socialprofiles by the first social profile author, the publication date, theabstract, the unique identification number, the search terms used toidentify the related social profile or the noun-phrases used to identifythe social profiles, or the noun-phrases in the links of the first file.

For at least some embodiments, second authors 551 are notifiedelectronically (by methods discussed in conjunction with FIG. 1) withthe second list of inquiries. Server 520 receives the second responsefrom second social profile authors 551 and analyzes the second response.The second response further refines the machine generated searchresults. The second response includes a selection of social profilesrelated to the first file. In an embodiment, the second responseincludes a ranked list of the related social profiles, identifying therelevance of the related social profiles to the first file.

In an embodiment, server 520 generates a questionnaire based onidentified social profiles related to the first file 110. Thequestionnaire includes the opinion of the social profile author of theidentified social profiles about the selection as a related socialprofile to the first file. The questionnaire is notified to the socialprofile authors of identified social profiles 552. Server 520 receivesresponse3 from the authors of identified social profile 552. In anembodiment, server 520 ranks an identified social profile based on thenumber of selections from second social profile authors 551 and theselection from the author of identified social profile 552. A subset ofthe ranked related social profiles is selected. In an embodiment, allsocial profiles selected by second social profile authors are selected.In another embodiment, related social profiles receiving a certain rankare selected. Information related to the selected/ranked social profilesis stored in social network 140. In an embodiment, the informationrelated to the selected/ranked social profile includes one or more ofhyper-link to the selected social profile, the author of the selectedsocial profile, the title of the selected social profile, the socialprofile authors, the opinion of the author of the selected socialprofile, opinion of the authors of the first file, institution of thesocial profile author, the published date, and the selection/rank date.When a user selects the first file identifier 553, server 520 retrievesthe information related to the selected related social profiles fromsocial network 140. In several embodiments, information related to thesubset of selected/ranked social profiles is presented to the user shownin FIG. 2 and FIG. 3. In one embodiment, the identity of the socialprofile authors who selected each social profile is presented to theuser by displaying meta-data such as the social profile author's name,institution, and qualifications. In another embodiment, informationabout the opinion of the social profile author of the selected socialprofile is presented to the user.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of system 600, an embodiment of a system ofproviding related social profiles, where a social profile author isinvolved in the selecting/ranking a subset of social profiles, where asearch yields a first file. Server 620 searches for a first file in thesocial network of the enterprise. The search engine outputs a list ofsocial profiles 610 related to the first file based on search techniquesdescribed in conjunction with FIG. 1. Server 620 generates a list ofinquiries based on the list of related social profiles. The list ofinquiries includes questions whether each of the social profiles fromsearch results are relevant to the first file.

The list of inquiries is notified to the author of the social profile130. A response is received from the social profile author. The responseincludes a selection of social profiles related to the first file andoptionally the reason for relevancy in the social profile author'sopinion. In an embodiment, the response includes a ranked list of therelated social profiles, identifying the relevance of the related socialprofiles to the first file. Server 620 ranks the related social profilesbased on the response from the social profile author. A subset of theranked related social profiles is selected. Server 620 storesinformation about the subset of selected/ranked social profiles indatabase 140. When a second search yields a plurality of search resultscontaining the information identifying first file 650, server 620,retrieves the stored information about the subset of selected/rankedsocial profiles and influences the ranking of the first file relativethe search results when presenting the search results to the user. Inone embodiment, the identity of the social profile authors who selectedeach social profile is revealed to the user by displaying meta-data suchas the author's name, institution, and qualifications.

Methods

FIG. 7 is a flowchart that includes the steps of an example of a methodof providing related social profiles, where a social profile author isinvolved in the selecting/ranking a subset of social profiles. In step702, the social network is searched to identify one or more socialprofiles that are related to a first file. For at least someembodiments, the search is based on any of or all of natural languagesearch, machine language search, text analysis, or filtering. For atleast some embodiments, the social network is searched for keywords thatare automatically generated by the server. The keywords may be theauthor/authors of the first file, frequently appearing words, authors ofcited references in the first file, noun phrases based on subjectmatter, and title. In an embodiment, the search is conducted on thefull-text of the social profile. In another embodiment, only theabstract and the title are searched. In an embodiment, only socialprofiles published after the first file's published date are searched.In an embodiment, the algorithm used to generate the search terms usingFacebook Graph® API automatically extracts noun phrases from the firstfile using natural language processing tools and ranks them by thenumber of occurrences in the social profile compared to the number ofoccurrences on the web. In an embodiment, citation-validation is used togenerate the list of related social profiles to improve the quality andrelevance of the search results.

In step 704, the server generates a list of inquires based on the searchresults of step 702 to access the relevancy of the search result. Thelist of inquiries includes questions about each related social profile.In an embodiment, the inquiries list the title of one or more socialprofiles identified in the search, the publication date, and the searchterms used to identify the social profile. Other embodiments may notlist all the above items. FIG. 2 and FIG. 3, show an example of the listof inquiries presented to authors. In step 706, the list of inquiries isnotified to at least one author of the first file. In the describedembodiments, the notification can be sent electronically by an email, ora message on a social network or instant message. Web based interface isanother method of notifying the social profile author.

In step 708, method 700 receives at least one response to the list ofinquiries from the social profile authors. The response includes aselection whether any of the social profiles are relevant to the firstfile. If any of the social profiles are relevant, a selection of therelevant social profile and optionally the reason for the social profilebeing relevant is received by the server. In an embodiment, the responseincludes a list of the related social profiles, identifying therelevance of the related social profiles to the first file. In step 710,method 700 analyzes the responses from the social profile authors. Therelated social profiles are ranked based on the number of selectionsreceived from the social profile authors. A subset of the ranked relatedsocial profiles is selected. In an embodiment, all social profilesselected by the social profile authors are selected. In anotherembodiment, a certain number of ranked social profiles are selected. Inanother embodiment, social profiles receiving certain rank are selected.Method 700 creates a hyperlink between the first file and theselected/ranked subset of social profiles. The hyperlink can influencethe search results in the social network when the first file isinvolved. In step 712, information about the selected/ranked socialprofiles related to the first file is stored. The information about theselected/ranked social profiles includes at least one of hyperlinks tothe social profiles in the social network, the rank of each socialprofile in the selected subset, metadata of the social profiles. Theinformation may be stored on the social network or any other storagesystem.

Steps 702-712 are performed to generate a list of selected/ranked socialprofiles that may be more relevant than the machine generatedreferenced. In an embodiment, steps 702-712 are performed once. Inanother embodiment, steps 702-712 are performed at certain fixedintervals. In another embodiment, events such as addition of a certainnumber of social profiles or a manual intervention may trigger steps702-712.

In step 714, method 700 receives a selection of the first fileidentifier or information about the first file from a user. The socialprofile or information about the social profile may be selected fromsearch results or from a list of social profiles. The server retrievesthe stored information about the selected/ranked social profiles in step716. In several embodiments, information about the related socialprofiles is displayed to the user in step 718 as shown in FIG. 2 andFIG. 3. In one embodiment, the identity of the authors who selected eachsocial profile is revealed to the user by displaying meta-data such asthe author's name, institution, and qualifications. Steps 714-718 areperformed when a user selects the first file for display.

In an embodiment, each of the steps of method 700 may be a distinctstep. In other embodiments, method 700 may not have all of the abovesteps and/or may have other steps in addition to or instead of thoselisted above. The steps of method 700 may be performed in another order.Subsets of the steps listed above as part of method 700 may be used toform their own method. In an embodiment, there could be multipleinstances of method 700.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart that includes the steps of an example of a method800 of providing a list of related social profiles, where more than onelist of inquiries is generated and more than one social profile authoris involved in the selecting/ranking a subset of social profiles. Inthis method, at least two distinct lists of inquiries are generated, thefirst list of inquiries is sent to the first social profile author andthe second list of inquiries is sent to the other social profileauthors. The second list of inquiries is generated based on the responsefrom the first social profile author.

In method 800, a set of one or more social profiles related to a firstfile is identified in step 802. In step 804, a first list of inquiriesabout the set of social profiles identified in step 802 is generated.The first list of inquires includes questions whether each of theidentified social profiles are related to the first file and optionallywhy they are related. In the described embodiment, steps 802 and 804 aresimilar to steps 702 and 704 respectively. The first list of inquiriesis notified to a first social profile author of the first file in step806. A first response to the first list of inquiries is received in step808. The response includes a selection of social profiles related to thefirst file and optionally the reason for the selection. In step 810, asecond list of inquires based on the response from the first socialprofile author about the relevance of the set of social profiles to thefirst files is generated. In an embodiment, the second list of inquiriesincludes a list of social profiles selected by the first social profileauthor for selecting social profiles related to the first file. In anembodiment, the second list of inquires includes questions whether thesecond social profile author agrees with the first social profileauthor. In another embodiment, the second list of inquiries includes thereason for a social profile being relevant to the first file.

One or more second social profile authors of the first file are notifiedwith the second list of inquiries in step 812. In step 814, one or moresecond responses is received from the second social profile author s551. In an embodiment, a questionnaire is generated based on the list ofidentified social profiles in step 815A. The questionnaire includeswhether the identified social profile is related to the first file. Thequestionnaire is notified to one or more authors of the plurality ofidentified social profiles. In step 815B, server 520 receives responsefrom one or more authors of the plurality of identified social profiles.

In step 816, the second response from the second social profile authorsin analyzed. In an embodiment, the response from one or more authors ofthe plurality of identified social profiles is analyzed. In anembodiment, social profiles are ranked based on the number of selectionsfrom the second authors. In another embodiment, social profiles areranked based on the response from authors of identified social profilesin addition to the response from second social profile authors. In anembodiment, the response includes identifying the relevance of therelated social profiles to the first file. In an embodiment, socialprofiles are ranked based on the number of selections from the secondsocial profile authors. In another embodiment, the ranking of a socialprofile is also based on the opinion of the author of the identifiedsocial profile. A subset of the ranked social profiles is selected. Inan embodiment, all social profiles selected by the second social profileauthors are selected. In another embodiment, a certain number of rankedsocial profiles or social profiles with a certain rank are selected.Method 800 creates a hyperlink between the first file and theselected/ranked subset of social profiles. The hyperlink can influencethe search results in the social network when the first file isinvolved. In step 818, information related to the selected/ranked subsetof social profiles related to the first file is stored in a socialnetwork. The information includes one or more of hyperlink to theselected social profile, opinion of the social profile authors, opinionof the authors of the selected social profile, the institution of thesocial profile author s, the ranking of the selected social profile, andthe date of ranking.

Steps 802-818 are performed to generate a list of selected/ranked socialprofiles that may be more relevant than the machine generatedreferences. In an embodiment, steps 802-818 are performed once. Inanother embodiment, steps 802-818 are performed at certain fixedintervals. In another embodiment, events such as addition of a certainnumber of social profiles or a manual intervention may trigger steps802-818.

In step 820, the server receives a selection of the first fileidentifier. Information about the related social profiles of the firstfile stored in a social network is retrieved in step 822. Informationrelated to the selected/ranked social profiles related to the first fileis presented to the user in step 824. Steps 820-824 are performed when auser selects the first file for display. Steps 818, 820, 822, and 824are similar to steps 712, 714, 716, and 718 respectively. In anembodiment, each of the steps of method 800 may be a distinct step. Inother embodiments, method 800 may not have all of the above steps and/ormay have other steps in addition to or instead of those listed above.The steps of method 800 may be performed in another order. Subsets ofthe steps listed above as part of method 800 may be used to form theirown method. In an embodiment, there could be multiple instances ofmethod 800.

FIG. 9 is a flowchart that includes the steps of an example of method900 of providing a list of related social profiles, where an authorprovides input to selecting/ranking a subset of social profiles, and asearch yields a first file. A first search in the social network using asearch engine provides a list of social profiles related to the firstfile in step 902. In embodiment, the algorithm used to generate thesearch terms using Facebook Graph® API automatically extracts nounphrases from the first file using natural language processing tools andranking them by the number of occurrences in the social profile comparedto the number of occurrences on the web. In an embodiment,citation-validation is used to generate the list of related socialprofiles. For at least some embodiments, a list of inquiries isgenerated based on the social profiles related to the first file in step904. The list of inquiries includes whether each social profile listedas related social profile from the search results is related to thefirst file and optionally the reason for being related.

In step 906, the list of inquiries is notified to one or more socialprofile authors. In step 908, method 900, receives at least one responsefrom the social profile authors providing information about therelevancy of related social profiles to the first file and optionallythe reason for a social profile being related in the opinion of thesocial profile author. In step 910, the related social profiles areranked based on the number of selections from the social profileauthors. In an embodiment, the response includes a ranked list of therelated social profiles, identifying the relevance of the related socialprofiles to the first file. A subset of the ranked social profiles isselected. Information related to the subset of social profiles is storedin a database in step 912. Method 900 creates a hyperlink between thefirst file and the selected/ranked subset of social profiles. Thehyperlink can influence the search results in the social network whenthe first file is involved. Steps 904, 906, 908, 910, and 912 may besimilar to steps 704, 706, 708, 710 and 712.

Steps 902-912 are performed to generate a list of selected/ranked socialprofiles that may be more relevant than the machine generatedreferenced. In an embodiment, steps 902-912 are performed once. Inanother embodiment, steps 902-912 are performed at certain fixedintervals. In another embodiment, events such as addition of a certainnumber of social profiles or a manual intervention may trigger steps902-912.

A second search in the social network using a search engine yields afirst file and the server receives a selection of the first fileidentifier in step 914. The selection of the first file can influencethe search results of future searches. The server retrieves informationabout the related social profiles (stored in step 912) from the socialnetwork in step 916. In an embodiment, in step 918, information aboutthe related social profiles is presented to the user as shown in FIG. 2and FIG. 3. In one embodiment, the identity of the authors who selectedeach social profile is revealed to the user by displaying meta-data suchas the author's name, institution, and qualifications. Steps 914, 916,and 918 may be similar to steps 714, 716 and 718. Steps 914, 916, and918 are repeated for every search yielding the first file. In anembodiment, each of the steps of method 900 may be a distinct step. Inother embodiments, method 900 may not have all of the above steps and/ormay have other steps in addition to or instead of those listed above.The steps of method 900 may be performed in another order. Subsets ofthe steps listed above as part of method 900 may be used to form theirown method. In an embodiment, there could be multiple instances ofmethod 900.

Identifying Related Social Profiles

One or more social profiles related to a first file in the socialnetwork are identified by server 120 or server 420 or server 520. In thedescribed embodiments, the first file can reside in author user system1022, or in the social network 1020 or in server system 1002. Therelated social profiles are identified by natural language search, ortext analysis, or from filtering, or any other search techniques. In anembodiment, server 120 or 420 or 520 extracts from noun phrases fromsocial profiles in the social network using natural language processingtools and ranks them by the number of occurrences in the social profilecompared to the number of occurrences on the social network. In anembodiment, the search terms are in the text of the citations in thefirst file. In another embodiment, the search terms are in the abstractor the full-text of the social profiles in the social network. In oneembodiment, server 620 searches the social network using Facebook Graph®API to automatically extract noun phrases from social profiles usingnatural language processing tools and rank them by the number ofoccurrences in the social profile compared to the number of occurrenceson the social network. In an embodiment, link-validation is used togenerate the list of related social profiles.

In another embodiment, the Facebook “related profiles” method is used toidentify the social profiles or papers published after the first file ina social network. On Facebook, related profiles are derived fromtext-analysis of social profiles, and a ranked list of social profilesthat may be related is presented to the user. For each word or term ineach social profile, a numeric weight is computed based on the number oftimes the word occurs in the social profile and the number of socialprofiles the term occurs in within the social network. Thenumeric-weight is used to find the most similar pairs of papers orsocial profiles.

Generation of List of Inquiries

In an embodiment, the list of inquiries generated by the system serverincludes one or more identified social profiles related to a first file.In an embodiment, the inquiries include the search terms used in asearch using text analysis or filtering. In another embodiment, the listof inquires includes one or more identified social profiles and thenoun-phrases from the first file used to identify the social profiles.In an embodiment, the list of inquiries presented to the first socialprofile author includes one or more titles of related of socialprofiles, the search term used to identify the related social profiles,the noun-phrases in the citations of the first file, the publicationdate, the abstract, and the unique identification. The list of inquiriesto second social profile author is influenced by a response receivedfrom a first author. The list of inquiries to the second social profileauthor includes one or more of the selection of related social profilesby the first social profile author, the search terms used to identifythe related social profile, the noun-phases used in citation-validationtechniques, the abstract, the unique identification number and thepublication date. In an embodiment, the list of inquiries includes oneor more of the types of relationship tags of the identified socialprofile such as whether the identified social profile summarizes thefirst file, contradicts the first file, or complements the first file.

The list of inquires is notified electronically to one or more secondsocial profile authors. The method of notification of the list ofinquiries to the first social profile author and the second socialprofile authors comprises at least one of an email, messaging on asocial network, instant message or a web-based interface notification.

In an embodiment, a questionnaire is generated by the system serverincludes one or more identified social profiles related to a first file.In an embodiment, the questionnaire includes whether the identifiedsocial profile is related to the first file. The questionnaire isnotified to the author of the identified social profile. The method ofnotification of the questionnaire to the author of the identified socialprofile comprises at least one of an email, messaging on a socialnetwork, instant message or a web-based interface notification.

Selection and Ranking of Related Social Profiles

The related social profiles are ranked based on the number of selectionsfrom the social profile authors. In an embodiment, a selection of therelated social profile from each social profile author is rankedequally. In another embodiment, selection of a social profile from thefirst social profile author receives higher ranking. In anotherembodiment, the selection of a social profile from a social profileauthor who responds to queries more often is ranked higher. In anotherembodiment, selection by the author designated for correspondencereceives higher ranking. In an embodiment, all social profiles selectedby the social profile authors are selected. In another embodiment, acertain number of the ranked social profiles are selected. In anotherembodiment, social profiles receiving a certain rank are selected.

An embodiment of a method of identifying social profiles in a socialnetwork having relevance to a first file, comprising identifying aplurality of social profiles within the social network, wherein theplurality of social profiles each have a relationship with the firstfile; generating, by a system server, a list of inquiries based on theplurality of social profiles; providing, by the system server, the listof inquiries to at least one author of the first file; receiving fromthe at least one author at least one response to the list of inquiries;selecting a subset of the plurality of social profiles based on the atleast one response; and storing information related to the selectedsubset of the plurality of social profiles for access if the first fileis selected.

An embodiment of a method further comprising generating, by the systemserver, a second list of inquiries based on the plurality of socialprofiles; providing, by the system server, the second list of inquiriesto at least one second author of the plurality of social profiles;receiving from the at least one second author of the plurality of socialprofiles at least one second response to the second list of inquiries;re-selecting the subset of the plurality of social profiles based on theat least one response and the at least one second response; storinginformation related to the re-selected subset of the plurality of socialprofiles for access if the first file is selected. An embodiment of amethod further comprising providing, by the system server, the selectedsubset of the plurality of social profiles to a user that selects thefirst file and identifying the at least one author to the user.

An embodiment of a method wherein identifying the at least one authorcomprises providing the user with the at least one author's name,qualifications or institution. An embodiment of a method furthercomprising providing, by the system server, the selected subset of theplurality of social profiles to a user that selects the first file andidentifying the at least one author of the first file, and the at leastone author of the plurality of social profiles to the user, whereinidentifying the at least one author comprises providing the user withthe at one of a name, qualifications or institution of the at least oneauthor. An embodiment of a method further comprising providing ahyperlink between the first file and the selected subset of theplurality of social profiles, wherein the hyperlink influences a rankingof search results that include at least one of the first file and theplurality of social profiles. An embodiment of a method wherein theplurality of social profiles are each identified by a plurality ofsubject-matter searches, wherein each search identifies one of theplurality of social profiles and the first file. An embodiment of amethod wherein at least one of the plurality of subject-matter searchesis refined by the at least one response.

An embodiment of a method wherein at least one of the plurality ofsubject-matter searches uses a keyword search application-programminginterface to access records in a social network. An embodiment of amethod wherein the list of inquiries includes search terms used in asearch that identified the first file and the plurality of socialprofiles, thereby establishing a relationship between the first file andthe plurality of social profiles by text analysis or filtering. Anembodiment of a method wherein the search terms comprise strings ofwords. An embodiment of a method wherein the search terms comprise nounphrases. An embodiment of a method wherein the search terms compriseauthor names cited by the first file. An embodiment of a method whereinthe search terms comprise a term within the first file.

An embodiment of a method the search is based on at least one of a wordstring, an author, or an image. An embodiment of a method wherein thesearch terms are included within text of links of the first file. Anembodiment of a method wherein each of the plurality of social profilesinclude a publication date, wherein each of the publication dates aremore recent than at least one of a first revision or a last revisiondate of the first file. An embodiment of a method wherein each of theplurality of social profiles includes a publication date, wherein eachof the publication dates comprises a specific date. An embodiment of amethod wherein each of the plurality of social profiles includes apublication date, wherein each of the publication dates comprises a datebefore a specific date. An embodiment of a method wherein the list ofinquiries includes titles of at least a subset of the plurality ofsocial profiles. An embodiment of a method wherein the list of inquiriesincludes authors of at least a subset of the plurality of socialprofiles. An embodiment of a method wherein the at least one authorincludes a first author and a second author, and wherein the list ofinquiries for the first author is influenced by a response received fromthe second author. An embodiment of a method wherein the list ofinquiries includes a relationship tag between at least one of theplurality of social profiles and the first file. An embodiment of amethod where in the relationship tag comprises at least one question ofwhether the relationship of the at least one of the plurality of socialprofiles is supportive, contradictory or summarizing. An embodiment of amethod wherein providing the list of inquiries to the at least oneauthor of the first file comprises electronically communicating the listof inquires to the at least one author using a notification. Anembodiment of a method wherein the notification comprises at least oneof an email, messaging on a social network, or instant message. Anembodiment of a method wherein the notification comprises a web-basedinterface notification.

An embodiment of a method wherein receiving from the at least one authorat least one response to the list of inquiries comprises receiving aselected subset of the plurality of social profiles that the at leastone author selects as being relevant to the first file. An embodiment ofa method wherein receiving from the at least one author at least oneresponse to the list of inquiries comprises receiving a ranked list ofat least a subset of the plurality of social profiles that identifies anorder of relevance of the at least the subset of the plurality of socialprofiles to the first file. An embodiment of a method further comprisingproviding the at least one inquiry based on one response to at least oneother author; receiving from the at least one other author at least onesecond response to the at least one response; re-selecting the subset ofthe plurality of social profiles based on the at least one secondresponse; storing information related to the re-selected subset of theplurality of social profiles for access if the first file is selected.

An embodiment of a method wherein the list of inquiries is provided to aplurality of authors, and responses received from each of the pluralityof authors are compiled for selecting the subset of the plurality ofsocial profiles. An embodiment of a method wherein a plurality of listsof inquiries are provided to a plurality of authors, and responsesreceived from each of the plurality of authors are compiled forselecting the subset of the plurality of social profiles. An embodimentof a method further comprising the at least one author having apermission to edit the first file. An embodiment of a method for aserver to identify social profiles having relevance to a first file,comprising receiving, by the server, a plurality of social profiles,wherein the plurality of social profiles were generated by a subjectmatter search; generating, by the server, a list of inquiries based onthe plurality of social profiles; providing, by the server, the list ofinquiries to an author of the first file, wherein the first file is aone of the plurality of social profiles; receiving, by the server, fromthe author at least one response to the list of inquiries; selecting, bythe server, a subset of the plurality of social profiles based on the atleast one response; storing, by the server, the selected subset of theplurality of social profiles for access if the first file is selected.An embodiment of a method further comprising providing, by the server,the selected subset of the plurality of social profiles to a user thatselects the first file.

An embodiment of a system for identifying social profiles havingrelevance to a first file, comprising a server configured to present ona first display a list of inquiries to an identified author of a firstfile, wherein the list of inquiries is based on a plurality of socialprofiles; the server configured to receive from the identified author atleast one response to the list of inquiries; the server configured toselect a subset of the plurality of social profiles based on the atleast one response; a server configured to present on a second displaythe selected subset of the plurality of social profiles to a user thatselects the first file.

An embodiment of a programmable storage device readable by a machine,tangibly embodying a program of instructions when executed by themachine to perform a method of identifying social profiles of a socialnetwork having relevance to a first file, the method comprising:identifying a plurality of social profiles within the social network,wherein the plurality of social profiles each have a relationship withthe first file; generating, by a system server, a list of inquiriesbased on the plurality of social profiles; providing, by the systemserver, the list of inquiries to at least one author of the first file;receiving from the at least one author at least one response to the listof inquiries; selecting a subset of the plurality of social profilesbased on the at least one response; storing information related to theselected subset of the plurality of social profiles for access if thefirst file is selected.

An embodiment of a method of identifying social profiles of a socialnetwork having relevance to a first file, comprising: identifying aplurality of social profiles within the social network, wherein theplurality of social profiles each have a relationship with the firstfile; generating, by a system server, a first list of inquiries based onthe plurality of social profiles; providing, by the system server, thefirst list of inquiries to at least one author of the first file;receiving from the at least one author of the plurality of socialprofiles at least one first response to the first list of inquiries;generating, by the system server, a second list of inquiries based onthe plurality of social profiles; providing, by the system server, thesecond list of inquiries to at least one second author of the pluralityof social profiles; receiving from the at least one second author of theplurality of social profiles at least one second response to the secondlist of inquiries; selecting a subset of the plurality of socialprofiles based on the at least one first response and the at least onesecond response; storing information related to the selected subset ofthe plurality of social profiles for access if the first file isselected. An embodiment of a method wherein the information related tothe selected subset of the plurality of social profiles comprises anopinion of the at least one author of either the first file or theplurality of social profiles. An embodiment of a method furthercomprises providing the opinion of the at least one author to a userthat selects the first file.

System

FIG. 10 shows a block diagram of system 1000, an embodiment of a systemof providing related social profiles to a search result. The systemconsists of server system 1002, network 1016, user system 1018, socialnetwork 1020, author user system 1022, and storage system forinformation related to selected/ranked subset of social profiles 1024among others. In other embodiments, system 1000 may not have all of theelements or features listed and/or may have other elements or featuresinstead of or in addition to those listed.

As shown in FIG. 10, for the described embodiments, server system 1002includes processor system 1004 and memory system 1006 among others.Server system 1002 consists of on one or more servers connected to thenetwork. Server system 1002 can be a single unit, distributed in variouslocations, or virtualized. Processor system 1004 may include any one of,some of, any combination of, or all of multiple parallel processors, asingle processor, a system of processors having one or more centralprocessors and/or one or more specialized processors dedicated tospecific tasks. Also, processor system 1004 may include one or moreDigital Signal Processors (DSPs) in addition to or in place of one ormore Central Processing Units (CPUs) and/or may have one or more digitalsignal processing programs that run on one or more CPU.

Memory system 1006 may include, for example, any one of, some of, anycombination of, or all of a long-term storage system, such as a harddrive; a short-term storage system, such as random access memory; aremovable storage system, such as a floppy drive or a removable drive;and/or flash memory. Memory system 1006 may include one or moremachine-readable mediums that may store a variety of different types ofinformation. The term machine-readable medium is used to refer to anymedium capable carrying information that is readable by a machine. Oneexample of a machine-readable medium is a computer-readable medium.

In an embodiment, memory system 1006 stores code for search engine 1008,code to identify plurality of social profiles 1010, code to generate alist of inquiries/questionnaire 1012, and code to select/rank subset ofplurality of social profiles 1014. In an embodiment, memory system 1006stores code for search engine 1006 to search the social network forsocial profiles related to a first file and returns the result to serversystem 1002. In the described embodiments, the first file can reside inthe social network 1020, or author user system 1022, or storage systemfor information related to selected/ranked subset of social profiles1024 or memory system 1006 or any other storage system. In anembodiment, the search engine searches the abstract of the socialprofile. In another embodiment, the search engine searches the entiresocial profile for keywords. The results from the search engine areranked in order of relevancy. The relevancy may be the number of timesthe keyword appears in the social profile, and the number of hyperlinks.

The keywords for searching related social profiles are supplied by thecode to identify plurality of social profiles 1010. The keywords may beall of or some of frequently used noun phrases, the author of the firstfile, the authors listed in the references cited in the first file,words from the title, publication date, words related to subject matter.Once the server receives the list of social profiles related to thefirst file, an inquiry is automatically generated by code to generate alist of inquiries 1012 and sent to one or more authors of socialprofiles. The list of inquiries is based on the search results. Theinquiries include the relevancy of each of the social profiles listed asa related social profile to the first file, the reason for the socialprofile being related to the first file. Code to select/rank subset ofplurality of social profiles 1014, selects a subset of the socialprofiles from search results, stores information about the selectedsubset of social profiles, and provides a hyperlink between the firstfile and the selected subset of social profiles. Selection of socialprofiles may also include ranking the social profiles based on thenumber of selection from the social profile authors. In an embodiment,responses from different social profile authors can have differentweight. Information related to the selected/ranked subset of socialprofiles is stored. In an embodiment, the information related to theselected/ranked subset of social profiles is stored on a storage systemfor information related to selected/ranked subset of social profiles1024. In another embodiment, the information related to theselected/ranked subset of social profiles is stored in memory system1006. In another embodiment, the information related to theselected/ranked subset of social profiles is stored in the socialnetwork 1020. In an embodiment, a hyperlink is created between the firstfile and the selected subset of social profiles. The hyperlinkinfluences the ranking of search results by the search engine when thefirst file is involved.

Network 1016 is a network and/or combination of networks of devices thatcommunicate with one another within an enterprise or on the Internet.User system 1018 is a user device connected to the network 1016. Usersystem 1018 selects a social profile from the social network. The socialprofile is selected from a search result or from a listing of socialprofiles. Social network 1020 is a shared social network. All users canaccess the social network to read and in some cases contribute to thesocial profile system. Author user system 1022 is a user system in thenetwork. The author user system has read and write access to socialprofiles in social network 1020. An author of a social profile may be anauthor of the social profile, co-author of the social profile, an expertin the subject matter or a team member. An embodiment includes aprogrammable storage device (such as memory system 1002) readable by amachine (such as, processor system 1004), tangibly embodying a programof instructions when executed by the machine to perform a method ofidentifying one or more social profiles in a social network related to afirst file. The method includes identifying a plurality of socialprofiles within the social network, wherein the plurality of socialprofiles each have a relationship with the first file, wherein thesocial network allows uploading and sharing of social profiles of users,and wherein each social profile includes a representation of a user. Themethod further includes generating, by a system server, a list ofinquiries based on the plurality of social profiles, providing, by thesystem server, the list of inquiries to at least one author of the firstfile, receiving from the at least one author at least one response tothe list of inquiries, selecting a subset of the plurality of socialprofiles based on the at least one response, and storing informationrelated to the selected subset of the plurality of social profiles foraccess if the first file is selected.

Although specific embodiments have been described and illustrated, thedescribed embodiments are not to be limited to the specific forms orarrangements of parts so described and illustrated.

1. A method of identifying social profiles in a social network havingrelevance to a first file, comprising: identifying a plurality of socialprofiles within the social network, wherein the plurality of socialprofiles each have a relationship with the first file, wherein thesocial network allows uploading and sharing of social profiles of users,and wherein each social profile includes a representation of a user;generating, by a system server, a list of inquiries based on theplurality of social profiles; providing, by the system server, the listof inquiries to at least one author of the first file; receiving fromthe at least one author at least one response to the list of inquiries;selecting a subset of the plurality of social profiles based on the atleast one response; and storing information related to the selectedsubset of the plurality of social profiles for access if the first fileis selected; generating, by the system server, a second list ofinquiries based on the plurality of social profiles; providing, by thesystem server, the second list of inquiries to at least one secondauthor of the plurality of social profiles; receiving from the at leastone second author of the plurality of social profiles at least onesecond response to the second list of inquiries; re-selecting the subsetof the plurality of social profiles based on the at least one responseand the at least one second response; storing information related to there-selected subset of the plurality of social profiles for access if thefirst file is selected.
 2. The method of claim 1, further comprisingproviding the re-selected subset of the plurality of social profiles orthe selected subset of the plurality of social profiles to a user thatselects the first file; and identifying the at least one second authoror the at least one author to the user.
 3. The method of claim 2,wherein identifying the at least one second author or the at least oneauthor comprises providing the user with a name, qualifications orinstitution of the at least one second author or the at least oneauthor.
 4. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing ahyperlink between the first file and the selected subset of theplurality of social profiles, wherein the hyperlink influences a rankingof search results that include at least one of the first file and theplurality of social profiles.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein theplurality of social profiles are each identified by a plurality ofsubject-matter searches, wherein each search identifies one of theplurality of social profiles and the first file.
 6. The method of claim5, wherein at least one of the plurality of subject-matter searches isrefined by the at least one response.
 7. The method of claim 5, whereinat least one of the plurality of subject-matter searches uses a keywordsearch application programming interface to access records in a socialnetwork.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein the list of inquiriesincludes search terms used in a search that identified the first fileand the plurality of social profiles, thereby establishing arelationship between the first file and the plurality of social profilesby text analysis or filtering.
 9. The method of claim 1, wherein each ofthe plurality of social profiles include a publication date, whereineach of the publication dates are more recent than at least one of afirst revision or a last revision date of the first file.
 10. The methodof claim 1, wherein the list of inquiries includes titles of at least asubset of the plurality of social profiles.
 11. The method of claim 1,wherein the list of inquiries includes the at least one author of atleast a subset of the plurality of social profiles.
 12. The method ofclaim 1, wherein the list of inquiries is for the first author, and isinfluenced by a response received from the second author.
 13. The methodof claim 1, wherein the list of inquiries includes a relationship tagbetween at least one of the plurality of social profiles and the firstfile.
 14. The method of claim 13, where in the relationship tagcomprises at least one question of whether the relationship of the atleast one of the plurality of social profiles is supportive,contradictory or summarizing.
 15. The method of claim 1, whereinproviding the list of inquiries to the at least one author of the firstfile comprises electronically communicating the list of inquires to theat least one author using a notification.
 16. The method of claim 1,wherein receiving from the at least one author at least one response tothe list of inquiries comprises receiving a selected subset of theplurality of social profiles that the at least one author selects asbeing relevant to the first file.
 17. The method of claim 1, whereinreceiving from the at least one author at least one response to the listof inquiries comprises receiving a ranked list of at least a subset ofthe plurality of social profiles that identifies an order of relevanceof the at least the subset of the plurality of social profiles to thefirst file.
 18. The method of claim 1, wherein the list of inquiries isprovided to a plurality of authors, and responses received from each ofthe plurality of authors are compiled for selecting the subset of theplurality of social profiles.
 19. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising the at least one author having a permission to edit the firstfile.
 20. A method for a server to identify social profiles havingrelevance to a first file, comprising: receiving, by the server, aplurality of social profiles, wherein the plurality of social profileswere generated by a subject matter search; generating, by the server, alist of inquiries based on the plurality of social profiles; providing,by the server, the list of inquiries to an author of the first file,wherein the first file is a one of the plurality of social profiles;receiving, by the server, from the author at least one response to thelist of inquiries; selecting, by the server, a subset of the pluralityof social profiles based on the at least one response; storing, by theserver, the selected subset of the plurality of social profiles foraccess if the first file is selected; generating, by the system server,a second list of inquiries based on the plurality of social profiles;providing, by the system server, the second list of inquiries to atleast one second author of the plurality of social profiles; receivingfrom the at least one second author of the plurality of social profilesat least one second response to the second list of inquiries;re-selecting the subset of the plurality of social profiles based on theat least one response and the at least one second response; storinginformation related to the re-selected subset of the plurality of socialprofiles for access if the first file is selected.